


The Ghost of Christmas Past

by RageSeptember



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Christmas, Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Secret Santa, Sexual Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2828237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RageSeptember/pseuds/RageSeptember
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim is gone, but Christmas rolls around all the same. Sebastian wouldn't give a fuck - except he can't help but remember the holidays spent with the other. Written for jimflyingjmn as part of the MorMor Secret Santa exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost of Christmas Past

**Author's Note:**

> I have take a few liberties with certain facts: for instance, it did not snow in London in 2009. But you know, artistic license and all that.

When Sebastian wakes with a violent start, he doesn’t know what time it is. A strange, disturbing thing, that. Once he had been able to always tell, down to the minute, how long he had been out. Sleeping or unconscious, half an hour or twelve, it didn’t’ matter; he knew. But that was a long time ago, was before - 

He sits, making a face as a wave of nausea hits him. It’s dark outside, but that really doesn’t say much this time of the year. Could be two in the morning, could be half past five in the afternoon. He doesn’t remember when he fell asleep. Doesn’t really remember how he got back to the sorry excuse for a flat, either… 

The sound that woke him up continues, an insistent but strangely weak knocking on his door. Cursing under his breath, Sebastian stumbles from the couch and almost trips over an empty bottle carelessly dropped on the floor. 

 _Some killer you are. Times were when you could dance your way across a minefield or sidestep any punch thrown at you; these days crossing the sodding floor is a challenge. Oh, how the mighty have fallen._  

It sounds an awful lot like Jim, that voice in the back of his head. Sebastian wonders how long it’ll take until the memory of the other’s lilting speech will finally and forever fade. 

He yanks the front door open. 

A bunch of kids, dressed in oversized coats and eager grins. Still young enough that their shrill and off-key singing is endearing rather than laughable. Well, endearing to someone who likes children, at least… Sebastian scowls. What kind of parents let their children run around and knock on strange doors in this neighborhood? 

“What do you want?” he demands, automatically reaching for a smoke out of his back pocket. Good thing he apparently forgot to undress before falling asleep. 

A girl of no older than five gives him a reproachful look. “We’re _caroling_ ,” she explains, speaking slowly as if to the woefully stupid or ignorant. 

Caroling? Cigarette alight and between his lips, Sebastian gropes for his mobile. Tuesday 23 December reads the date on the cracked screen. 

_Huh. Would you look at that. It’s fucking Christmas._

—- 

Sebastian Moran doesn’t _mourn_ James Moriarty. Why the fuck would he? He never though Jim and he would grow old together; hand in hand on slow walks in the park, a cottage by the sea, watching each other’s hair gray and fall off? Bloody hell, he’d rather take a gun to his own head. _(Liar.)_  

So he doesn’t mourn Jim. It’s just that nothing seems very interesting or exciting anymore, nothing seems to matter much. There is little point in getting out of bed in the mornings, little point in not wasting his nights away drunk in some rundown pub or another. Little point in being careful about the jobs he chooses, little point in working at all, except he needs money to buy more booze and he’d rather die than touch any of the wealth Jim left behind. _Stupid fucking bastard. What was the **point** of conquering the criminal world and crown yourself king if this was how you wanted to end it? What was the bloody **point** , Jim?_ 

—- 

He’s chased the disappointed carolers away and collapsed back onto the couch. Probably ought to get down to the store and find something to eat, but he can’t stomach the thought of potentially being confronted with more _Christmas cheer_. Idiotic notion, anyway, this whole holiday and the pathetic attempt at pretending for a few days each year that people aren’t inherently selfish and cruel and that world isn’t an abysmal, pointless pile of garbage, good for nothing but giving you something to plant your feet on while you wait for the endless darkness of death. 

He’s never been one for Christmas, has Sebastian. Back in India it was all stately affairs at the embassy, at Eton they had tried to make him join the choir for the traditional Christmas concert, and the half-arsed attempts at celebration in Afghanistan had usually ended with one or more of the men getting into the sort of brawls that needed to be hushed up. Additionally, his mother had had the bad habit of calling each year, trying to convince him come home from the holidays. In spite of him always turning her down she hadn’t given up until Jim effectively made him disappear by taking away his old phone and making him move. 

And as for the Christmases with Jim –

Sebastian reaches for the unopened bottle of whiskey on the coffee table. Sometimes, when he is lucky, the drink will help blur the memories enough that they don’t bother him (much). It’s been getting less and less effective, though, and he’ll probably need to find something else to distract him, and soon. He’s been thinking of maybe joining up with one of the mercenary bands in Syria, but… he can’t be bothered. 

The whiskey goes down a treat, the familiar burn a dull comfort. Tastes like crap, of course, some blended shit that sells for 12 quid at Tesco. Sebastian can afford better, knows to appreciate better, but all of his favourite single malts remind him of a dark-eyed maniac who smiled like the devil. Jim wasn’t much of a drinker, but he did have a taste for expensive French reds and properly aged scotch. (And sometimes he made cocktails, not the fancy kind, but pink and rainbow-coloured ones that were much too sweet and entirely too garish, and he made Sebastian try them and every single time the sniper had a nagging suspicion that Jim was trying to poison or drug him. The man never did, as far as Sebastian knows. Well. Except that last night  –  ) 

He turns the telly on and takes another deep gulp, but he can already tell that it won’t work tonight. Like the rattle of Jacob Marley’s chains, he can hear Jim’s slightly shrill laughter in the back of his head, and he can see the other’s lips curl to reveal even teeth. The Ghost of Christmas past, come to say hello. 

—- 

 _2007_  

Their first Christmas isn’t really theirs at all. Sebastian spends most of it two miles south of Cardiff, in a car that smells of new leather and burnt plastic. As for Jim… who the fuck knows. It hasn’t been three months since Sebastian came into the man’s employ, and Jim won’t be Jim for half a year yet. ‘Boss’, Sebastian calls him when he’s feeling respectful (which most of the time, really, for all that the other is a tiny, annoying, Irish bastard), and ‘sir’ when he is not.  

“Problem with authority, hm? How very daddy issues of you.” It had been about the third thing Jim ever said to him, back when they first met in an empty warehouse outside of Luton. Any other person and Sebastian would have cocked an eyebrow and walked out, potentially after shooting the condescending bastard. But there had been _something_ in the depths of the shorter man’s eyes, something to suggest that this man was more than just fancy suits and smug cockiness.  

Sebastian had remained still, meeting the other’s gaze without changed expression. Jims dark eyes bore into him and for a moment there had been a sense of vertigo, the world shifting and slipping - 

Jim had smiled then, and started speaking of other things. Perhaps he, too, saw something worthy of further consideration in the other. 

—- 

 _2008_  

“Bloody _hell_!” Sebastian rears back, glaring at Jim whose lips are stained red with the sniper’s blood. “You’re going to give me fucking blood poisoning!” The wound to his neck isn’t deep but who the hell actually breaks skin with a love bite? All right, so Jim’s never been a gentle lover, the sadistic little fuck, but this is taking things a bit too far. Blood infections isn’t a joke; Sebastian knows it only too well after watching a fellow soldier take three days to die. 

“You swear too much,” Jim tells him blithely. “I’ve seen the books you read; I know for a fact that you can be far more eloquent when you chose to. Another rebellion against your father? It’s sweet, how hard you try to displease him. Don’t worry, pet, you can call me Daddy all you like and I’ll – “ 

Sebastian backhands him, and Jim’s eyes widen as his mouth rounds into an astonished ‘o’ (very carefully feigned, Sebastian will realize later). The shorter man reaches for his cheek, pressing his palm against the red mark, and then his face is alight not with vengeful fury but with gleeful interest. 

 _Oh_ , Sebastian thinks, somewhat dazed. _Oh, so **that’s** how it is._  

When Jim comes with a small mewl some time later Sebastian feels a hot wave of _triumph_ and _pride_ and pure _joy_ wash over him. “Merry Christmas, boss,” he purrs into the other’s ear as he moves to undo the cuffs. 

—- 

 _2009_  

London sees a white Christmas less frequently than every ten years, but when Sebastian steps through the front door half past two on the twenty-fifth there are snowflakes melting on his head and shoulders. Jim catches sight of him through the sitting room door and gives a small snicker. 

 “You look like a snowman.” The smile turns into a stern expression as he adds: “Don’t get anything on the floor.” No carpet for Jim, of course; it’s all dramatic Macassar Ebony cut to mimic natural patterning. 

Sebastian doesn’t get anything on the floor. Once he has put his coat and shoes away he heads for the kitchen, humming under his breath. Twenty minutes later he enters the sitting room with a tray in his hands. On it rests two large glasses of eggnog and small wrapped box. 

The look Jim give him is vaguely suspicious. “Is this a Christmas gift, Moran?” 

Sebastian rolls his eye. “No, obviously not. It is a gift and it happens to be Christmas day, but it’s not a _Christmas gift_. That’d be sentimental and silly, wouldn’t it?” 

“It would,” Jim agrees, though his lips are twitching. (And if there is a hint of warning in his next words, Sebastian doesn’t hear it, doesn’t allow himself to hear it.) “So glad you’re not falling into that trap, Tiger. Oh,” he adds as he tears the wrapping paper off and opens the box to reveal a small silver tiepin shaped like a fox’s head. “Is this supposed to be some sort of comment on my character, Sebastian?” 

The question is rather archly put but there is something uncharacteristically soft in Jim’s eyes, and when the sniper wraps an arm around his shoulder and pulls him close he doesn’t protest.

—- 

_2010_

With December the dark of lengthening nights is matched by Jim’s increasingly withdrawn mood. He spends more and more time locked away into his office, and often disappears from the flat for days at end without leaving word or explaining himself when he returns. Sometimes Sebastian will catch him sitting perfectly still on a chair or the couch, staring out into nothingness as his fingers twitch in some unfathomable rhythm. Attempts to draw the other back to the present – with sex or violence or whatever else the sniper can think of – works about half the time, and the effect never lasts. 

 “I was thinking we could go away for a bit,” he offers one rainy Sunday just one week shy of New Year’s Eve. “Get some sun, see something new. Morocco, maybe, or Croatia.” He glances at Jim, who hasn’t turned from his computer. “My treat. A Christmas gift, if you will. What do you say?” When there is no answer, he prompts: “Jim?” 

Finally, Jim looks away from the screen. The look he gives Sebastian is slightly confused, as if he can’t quite remember who Sebastian is or why the man is there. 

The sniper feigns an easy grin. “I said we should go on a holiday. I’m sick and tired of rain. How about wreaking some havoc someplace warm for a change?” 

Jim’s lips curl into a faint smile, but his eyes are already wandering. “Later,” he mumbles as he turns his back on the sniper once more. “I have a problem that needs solving. After that, we’ll go.” 

Sebastian nods. That’s all right, isn’t it? Jim’s a proper genius, after all; whatever problem he’s facing, it won’t take him long to sort it. Sebastian will simply have to be patient, he tells himself. They’ve already passed the winter solstice; soon the light returns. 

In about seven months he will wake up feeling groggy at half past seven in the evening, not understanding how the fuck he could have fallen asleep in the middle of the day. Jim won’t be home, he won’t answer his phone, and when Sebastian turns on the TV to check the news everything will already be too late. 

—- 

 _2011_  

Someone, somewhere, is presumably celebrating Christmas. Sebastian doesn’t know, doesn’t care; his world ended on July the fourth and no amount of good cheer can change the fact that there’s a huge fucking hole running right through him and the emptiness of it is killing him. He’s tried to fill it with the hope that this is just another one of Jim’s clever schemes, a trick; the greatest one the Devil ever pulled. But month is added to month and Jim doesn’t return. He tries plotting revenge then, but that leaves him feeling just as empty. What is the point? Jim is gone. 

Upon his last visit to the flat he once shared with Jim, he grabs the fox tiepin and a bottle of Highland Park 18 yrs. Ten minutes after he has exited the building an explosion rips it apart and while the sniper watches the flames rise against the midnight sky he lifts the bottle to his lips and drinks, drinks, drinks, until he can’t feel the hole anymore. 

—- 

The bottle is almost empty as it slips out of the sniper’s hand and crashes against the floor. Sebastian has sagged back against the couch, passed out with his mouth half-open and something wet glistening on sallow cheeks. Christmas Eve has long since slipped into Christmas Day, and on the telly the boy choir of S:t Paul’s cathedral sings their exultation. 

 _“Joy to the world, the Lord is come._  

Sebastian is oblivious to them, to the world –  

– to the man who quietly opens the front door and slips inside. A shadow among shadows, the man makes a face at the mess, but nonetheless seats himself in a stained armchair to await the other’s awakening.  

Outside the window dawn breaks, darkness giving way to clear skies.


End file.
